Sunday, 17 May 2015

Bottled Scotch Ale in the 1950's

This series isn’t quite dead yet. I’ve found another relatively small set than my lazy arse can be arsed to sift through.

Scotch Ale – now there’s a topic to set my blood raging. At least when style Nazis are talking about it. Because it’s always drivel, totally unrelated to the real style. Like when they start saying that 90/- was a “traditional” name for Scotch Ale. Or “Wee Heavy” – which really just means a nip of Strong Ale.

The reality is for once much simpler than the fantasy. Have I mentioned how dull most Scottish brewing records are? Yes? Well, I’ll say it again anyway. Most Scottish brewing records are dead dull. Because they just had a single recipe which, through the magic of parti-gyling, they’d spin into 60/-, 70/-, 80/- and Strong Ale. Sometimes they even managed to squeeze out a Stout, too.

So really Scottish Strong Ale, usually called Scotch Ale outside Scotland, is just a beefed up Pale Ale. “How come it’s often dark then?” I hear you say. Because they’d colour it up with caramel to whatever shade they happened to fancy. Which was mostly dark brown. But not always, as we’ll see in a minute.

No, they didn’t use roast barley for colour, as some will have you believe. Where did that story come from? Either from someone who didn’t know, or didn’t want to believe how Scottish brewers got colour. Nor did they boil their beer for several days until it turned into syrup. Even if they ever had done that, the practise wouldn’t have survived two world wars when boil times were cut to save fuel.

I won’t go too much into the technical brewing details here. I’m saving that for another time. Just some bare bone specs this time. Mostly, as usual, courtesy of the Whitbread Gravity Book. I really don’t understand how I managed to live before finding that book.

I’ve two tables for you. First, the ones sold in Britain:

Scotch Ale in the 1950's as sold in the UK

Year

Brewer

Beer

Price
per pint d

Acidity

OG

FG

ABV

App.
Atten-uation

colour

1953

Gordon & Blair

Strong Ale

43.5

0.05

1046.7

1006

5.32

87.15%

9 + 40

1957

Younger, Wm.

Double Century Ale

32.5

0.06

1051.5

1018.6

4.25

63.88%

80

1953

Younger, Wm.

Century Ale

36

0.05

1056.4

1021.4

4.52

62.06%

71 B

1953

Maclachlan

Strong Ale

43.5

0.05

1063.2

1016.2

6.12

74.37%

16 + 40

1953

Jeffrey

Strong Ale

43.5

0.06

1064.3

1019.7

5.79

69.36%

11 + 40

1953

Barnard

Strong Ale

43.5

0.05

1065.2

1018.2

6.11

72.09%

18 + 40

1953

Murray W

Heavy Ale

43.5

0.06

1065.9

1019.2

6.07

70.86%

13 + 40

1953

WB Reid

Strong Ale

33

0.07

1065.9

1020.3

5.92

69.20%

8 + 40

1953

Younger, Robert

Strong Ale

43.5

0.07

1066.3

1016.8

6.45

74.66%

16 + 40

1953

Tennent

Strong Ale

43.5

0.06

1066.4

1021.2

5.86

68.07%

14 + 40

1953

Deucher, James

Lochside Strong Ale

38

0.05

1066.9

1014.9

6.79

77.73%

24 B

1955

Aitken

Strong Ale

45

0.05

1067

1020.3

6.06

69.70%

105

1958

Bernard

Strong Ale

1067

1021

5.97

68.66%

1953

Younger, Geo.

Strong Ale

43.5

0.06

1067.6

1021.9

5.93

67.60%

13 + 40

1955

Younger, Geo.

Strong Ale

45

0.05

1067.6

1022.3

5.87

67.01%

100

1955

Fowler

Twelve Guinea Ale

45

0.04

1068.1

1016.9

6.67

75.18%

120

1958

Tennent

Strong Ale

31.25

0.06

1068.4

1022.7

5.71

66.81%

100

1953

Usher

Strong Ale

43.5

0.06

1068.5

1020.1

6.29

70.66%

5 + 40

1955

Maclachlan

Strong Ale

45

0.05

1068.6

1023.4

5.86

65.89%

75

1953

Steel Coulson

Strong Ale

43.5

0.07

1069.5

1014.1

7.24

79.71%

11 + 40

1955

Deucher, James

Lochside Strong Ale

45

0.04

1069.6

1019.6

6.50

71.84%

31

1953

Fowler J

Strong Ale

45

0.07

1070.3

1017.6

6.87

74.96%

12 + 40

1953

McEwan

Strong Ale

45

0.06

1070.7

1019.5

6.66

72.42%

10 + 40

1953

Younger, Wm.

Strong Ale

43.5

0.05

1071.2

1024.2

6.09

66.01%

9 + 40

1955

Younger, Wm.

No. 1 Strong Ale

45

0.04

1071.4

1024.3

6.11

65.97%

80

1955

McEwan

Strong Ale

45

0.05

1071.5

1020.8

6.59

70.91%

85

1955

Murray W

Heavy Ale

45

0.04

1071.7

1021

6.59

70.71%

105

1953

Steel Coulson

Strong Ale

45

1075

1957

Jeffrey

Dishers Extra Strong
Ale

64

0.07

1088.6

1017.1

9.40

80.70%

27

Average

43.15

0.06

1067.3

1019.3

6.20

71.22%

Sources:

Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan
Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

T & J Bernard's brewing records held at the Scottish
Brewing Archive

document from the Steel Coulson archive held at the Scottish
Brewing Archives

There was quite a history of brewing strong beers in Scotland. That’s what they were famous for internationally. Well that and IPA. These are all, with a couple of exceptions at the start of the table, pretty powerful beers for the 1950’s. And the average gravity of 1067.3º is high. Especially when you consider average gravity of all beer was around 1037º.

For Scottish beers the degree of attenuation is also reasonably high. Though what I’ve noticed with a brewery’s 60/-, 70/- and 80/- is that there often wasn’t much difference in the FG. Meaning the stronger the beer, the higher the degree of attenuation. Scottish brewers clearly liked to leave some body in their low-gravity beers. Even if that was at the expense of ABV.

Colour. I told you I’d be coming back to that. All the above beers are dark brown. With the exception of Lochside Strong Ale and Dishers Extra Strong Ale, which are the colour of Bitter. No idea why these beers should be different to the rest.

Averaging 43d per pint, they’re about treble the price of a pint of draught Mild. So expensive beers. Though you have to take into account the higher price of bottled beer. The vast majority were sold in nip (third of a pint) bottles. Which meant a bottle of Strong Ale cost about the same as a pint of draught. I’m sure that’s not a coincidence. The price of a full pint would have scared customers off.

The second table is of Scotch Ales sold in Belgium:

Scotch Ale in the 1950's as sold in Belgium

Year

Brewer

Beer

Price
per pint d

Acidity

OG

FG

ABV

App.
Atten-uation

colour

1955

John Smith

Scotch Ale

0.08

1072.3

1022

6.54

69.57%

75

1954

John Smith

Scotch Ale

0.06

1072.6

1022.1

6.56

69.56%

95

1955

Truman

Scotch Ale

0.08

1083.4

1025.6

7.52

69.30%

80

1955

McEwan

Scotch Ale

0.07

1088.2

1020.2

8.92

77.10%

65

1955

Younger, Geo.

Gordon Highland
Scotch Ale

0.07

1090.3

1029.9

7.86

66.89%

55

1954

Younger, Geo.

Gordon Highland
Scotch Ale

0.06

1090.9

1028

8.20

69.20%

60

Average

0.07

1083.0

1024.6

7.60

70.27%

71.7

Source:

Whitbread Gravity book held at the London Metropolitan
Archives, document number LMA/4453/D/02/002.

The sharper eyed amongst have probably spotted that three of the six aren’t even from Scotland. Unsurprisingly, these average a good bit stronger than the domestic examples. They look like the Strong Ales sold in Scotland before WW II. Which is probably what they are in reality.

What is a surprise is the relatively pale colour of the three from Scotland. Around 60 is only just about brown.

I just took a look at the Stouts. So many of the bloody things. I’ll need some special motivation to tackle those.

4 comments:

"Nor did they boil their beer for several days until it turned into syrup. Even if they ever had done that, the practise wouldn’t have survived two world wars when boil times were cut to save fuel."

I've tended to assume this to be a garbled account of the production of the caramel they were buying in.

Roger Ryman at St Austell, before he went to work at Maclay's, worked for a Scottish firm that specialised in high-colour syrups and extracts, and Scott Williams of Williams Bros worked at another. Was this kind of sugar processing a Scottish speciality, perhaps?

(And that's *all* my research right there -- just thinking aloud, really.)